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Introduction

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Residents of the U.S. state of Wisconsin proudly display “America’s Dairyland” as the slogan on their license plates. Among the state’s credentials for the title is a history of being one of the country’s leaders in dairy production and in most milk products since shortly after the first cheese factory was opened in the state in 1864. Although the farm economy in Wisconsin Territory had been based on wheat, the soil became depleted and farmers reluctantly turned to dairying in the Driftless section in the south. Wisconsin cheese became an international delicacy; malted milk was invented there; and the development of a butterfat tester, to determine the richness of milk, brought the state creameries and commercial buttermaking.

When margarine was introduced in Europe in the 1870s as a low-priced butter substitute, it met with immediate resistance from U.S. dairy farmers, who lobbied the government to impose restrictive taxes on the product. Until 1967 Wisconsin was the last holdout against lifting the ban on the sale of yellow margarine.

Wisconsin is part of the country carved by giant glaciers during the Ice Age. When Jean Nicolet, a Frenchman in search of a northwest passage to China, landed on the Green Bay shores in 1634, he found a wooded wilderness laced with the lakes, rivers, and streams left by ice sheets that had begun melting 40,000 years before.

Over this network of inland waters, trappers had easy access to the trading posts where Wisconsin’s vast fur empire developed. Later, ore from the lead mines was loaded at landings along the Wisconsin River for shipment down the Mississippi River to St. Louis and New Orleans. Timber from the north pine woods also traveled downstream on the swift currents of Wisconsin’s rivers. Along Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, manufacturing and shipping centers gradually grew into cities.

Wisconsin has a long history as a progressive pioneer. It was the birthplace of the Republican Party and of the country’s first kindergarten. State income tax, workers’ compensation, vocational education, and unemployment insurance originated there during the political era dominated by the progressive La Follette family. (See alsoLa Follette, Robert M.)

Among the country’s leading states in industry as well as agriculture, Wisconsin is also one of the richest in natural beauty. Within its boundaries are nearly 15,000 lakes and thousands of streams. The land of woods and waters, with rolling hills and fertile valleys, is a popular vacation destination.

The state was named for its principal river, which appeared as “Ouisconsin,” among other spellings, in the records of early French explorers. The origin of the name is disputed and could come from a Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indian word, usually translated as “gathering of waters”; another theory is that the name is an anglicized version of a French rendering of an Indian name said to mean “the place where we live.” Its nickname is the Badger State, from the term applied to Wisconsin lead miners. They were called badgers because, as they reached a new site, they dug into the side of the hill, much as badgers dig in their burrows, and lived underground. Wisconsin’s other nickname is the Copper State, a reference to the copper mines in the north. Area 65,496 square miles (169,635 square kilometers). Population (2010) 5,686,986. (See alsoWisconsin in focus.)

Survey of the Badger State

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Wisconsin lies in the north-central part of the United States. It is bounded for 150 miles (241 kilometers) on the north by Lake Superior and by the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. On the east it is bounded by Lake Michigan for 425 miles (684 kilometers). Illinois lies directly south. The Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, which form most of Wisconsin’s western boundary, separate it from Iowa and Minnesota. From north to south Wisconsin’s greatest length is 300 miles (483 kilometers). Its greatest width is 280 miles (451 kilometers).

Natural Regions

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Several times during the Ice Age most of the Badger State was covered by giant glaciers. These ice sheets helped shape the physical features of Wisconsin and much of the rest of the Midwest. As a result, the natural regions of Wisconsin extend into its neighboring states. The state has two major regions: the Central Lowland in the south and the Superior Upland in the north.

Central Lowland

The Central Lowland is part of the expansive Interior Plains, which cover the central United States. The eastern half of the Central Lowland region is called the Eastern Lake section. It includes Wisconsin’s lowest point (581 feet; 177 meters), at Lake Michigan. The western half of the Central Lowland is called the Wisconsin Driftless section. This was not covered by glaciers and extends from southwestern Wisconsin into northwestern Illinois, northeastern Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota.

Superior Upland

The Superior Upland in northern Wisconsin is a part of the Laurentian Upland, which reaches into Michigan, Minnesota, and Canada. This region of ancient rocks is also called the Canadian Shield. The Superior Upland is divided into highland and lowland sections. In the south-central area of this region, near Ogema, is Wisconsin’s highest point, Timms Hill, at 1,951 feet (595 meters).

Rivers

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Wisconsin’s major watershed is a broad land arch extending north- and southward through the middle of the state. Streams to the west of this watershed flow into the Mississippi River. These include the St. Croix, Chippewa, Black, Wisconsin, and Rock rivers. Streams to the east of the watershed flow into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The St. Louis, Brule, Bad, and Montreal rivers drain the Lake Superior region. The Menominee, Peshtigo, Oconto, Wolf, Sheboygan, and Milwaukee rivers are a part of the Lake Michigan drainage system.

Climate

Wisconsin has a continental climate, with hot summers and cold winters. Seasonal extremes are modified somewhat by the two bordering Great Lakes—Superior and Michigan. Average temperatures in January range from about 10 °F (–12 °C) in the north to the low 20s F (about –6 °C) in the southeast; in July they range from the mid-60s F (about 19 °C) in the north to the low 70s F (about 22 °C) in the southwest. There are occasional summer freezes in the Central Lowland.

The annual growing season varies from about 90 days in the low areas of the northeast and in the north-central lowlands to 180 days in the south. The cooler climate in the central section of the state is partly the result of the peat and sandy soils, which do not retain heat. The southwestern valley and the east-central lakeshore have 140 to 150 frost-free days.

Precipitation is highest over the western and northern uplands, which receive 30 to 34 inches (76 to 86 centimeters) annually. The least precipitation, averaging about 28 inches (71 centimeters), occurs on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Annual snowfall of more than 100 inches (254 centimeters) has been recorded in northern Iron county, while in southeastern Wisconsin annual snowfall averages about 30 inches (76 centimeters). Snow covers the ground for about 85 days a year in the southern part of the state and for more than 140 days along Lake Superior.

Natural Resources

Wisconsin’s most valuable natural resources are its water, soil, and climate. These make farming and dairying very profitable. Wisconsin’s forests, though not as valuable as they once were, still add a good share to the state’s income. Hardwoods—cottonwood and aspen, red oak, white oak, hard maple, basswood, and soft maple—are the most plentiful. The chief softwoods are pine, hemlock, and spruce. Most of Wisconsin’s forests are in the northern part of the state. Strict conservation measures ensure a steady supply of lumber. Crushed stone and construction sand and gravel account for the bulk of the state’s mineral production. The Mississippi River and the Great Lakes supply the fishing industry and are also valuable commercial waterways.

The first soil conservation experiment in the United States was started near La Crosse in the early 1930s. Soil conservation methods spread from there throughout the state. The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Wisconsin Conservation Corps cooperate in this work. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service work together on forest conservation measures for the state.

People

Wisconsin’s population is predominantly of white European ancestry. According to the 2010 census, 86 percent of the state’s residents are white. People of German descent are most numerous, followed by those of Irish, Polish, Scandinavian (primarily Norwegian), and British heritage.

African Americans constitute the largest minority group in Wisconsin, representing more than 6 percent of the population. They live primarily in the southeastern lakeshore cities, with an especially large presence in Milwaukee. Asians make up more than 2 percent of the population. Many Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and particularly Hmong (an ethnic minority group from Laos) settled in the state as refugees from the Vietnam War. About 6 percent of the state’s residents identified themselves as Hispanic in 2010, an increase of nearly 75 percent since 2000. The Hispanic population has grown most rapidly in the southeastern counties.

Native Americans represent about 1 percent of the population. Many reside in the Milwaukee area, but most live on large northern or small southern reservations. Wisconsin contains 11 Native American reservations—the largest number of reservations east of the Mississippi River.

Cities

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Nearly three-fourths of Wisconsin’s residents live in urban areas. The largest city is Milwaukee. Once a major manufacturing city, it now has a diversified economy that relies heavily on services (including health care, finance, and insurance) and high-technology industries. Milwaukee forms the core of a five-county metropolitan area that includes such suburbs as Waukesha, Wauwatosa, and West Allis and the city of Racine, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south. Madison, the state capital and second largest city, lies in the south-central part of the state; its parks and lakes make it a popular recreation center. Green Bay is an industrial center and Great Lakes port about 110 miles (180 kilometers) north of Milwaukee.

Recreation

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Some 120,000 acres (50,000 hectares) of state parks and millions of acres in national, state, and county forests are available for recreational use in Wisconsin. Most of the public forests are in the north, although there is a park within an hour’s drive of just about any location in the state. Popular vacation spots include the Door Peninsula, in the northeast; the Dells of the Wisconsin River, in the south-central part of the state; and the forested areas around Rhinelander and Eagle River, in northern Oneida and Vilas counties.

The major fall sport is hunting—for bears, grouse, pheasant, ducks, geese, and deer. Fishing is good, and Wisconsin’s lakes and streams are stocked each year to maintain the supply of sport fish. The muskellunge, or muskie, is the king of game fish. In the northwest are trout streams. Ice fishing is a winter pastime throughout the state. Miles of inland water and the two Great Lakes are open for all kinds of water sports. Motorboat, sailboat, and iceboat races are held on Lake Winnebago, one of the country’s largest inland lakes.

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Winter sports include snowmobiling, ice skating, iceboating, tobogganing, sledding, cross-country skiing, and snowboarding. There are more than three dozen downhill-ski areas in the state. Winter festivals emphasizing these various sports are held throughout the state each year.

Professional sports teams in Wisconsin include the Milwaukee Brewers, in baseball; the Milwaukee Bucks, in basketball; and the Green Bay Packers, in football. The Packers, the only community-owned major professional sports franchise in the United States, rank among the premier franchises of the National Football League.

Education

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Wisconsin’s first schools were small private schools that charged tuition. The first free school was established at Southport (now Kenosha) in 1846. In 1849 the state legislature set up a district system of common schools. The first kindergarten in the United States was a German-language school that opened in Watertown in 1856. An 1867 law required most cities and villages to consolidate school districts, and in 1901 one-room rural schools were essentially made obsolete by the passage of the state graded school law.

Of Wisconsin’s state-supported colleges, the largest is the University of Wisconsin, with its main campus at Madison and branches spread throughout the state. The state also maintains numerous technical colleges. Among the private institutions are Marquette University, at Milwaukee; Lawrence University, at Appleton; Beloit College, at Beloit; and Ripon College, at Ripon.

Economy

Wisconsin has strengths in each of the major economic sectors: agriculture, industry, and services. It ranks among the leading states in dairy farming and manufacturing, particularly of paper and other forest products. Tourism and insurance are notable components of the service sector.

Agriculture, Fishing, and Forestry

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Courtesy of Wisconsin Tourism Development

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Agriculture in Wisconsin is based mainly on the dairy industry. Milk, cheese, and other dairy products account for almost half of the state’s agricultural income. Cattle and calves are another important livestock product. The most valuable crops include corn, soybeans, and potatoes. Wisconsin is a national leader in the production of oats, cranberries, peas, snap beans, and sweet corn.

Commercial fishing has been restored to some degree in Wisconsin’s portion of the Great Lakes after the parasitic sea lamprey killed off many of the fish from the 1940s to the ’60s. Since that time the lakes have been restocked with such fish as lake trout and whitefish, with varying results. The introduction of chinook and coho salmon and other game fish into Lake Michigan met with surprising success and caused a boom in the sportfishing industry.

Pulpwood production dominates Wisconsin’s large forest-product industry, accounting for well over half of the timber cut. Saw logs are the next most valuable forest product. Christmas tree farming is important in northern Wisconsin.

Industry

Manufacturing continues to be the single leading contributor to Wisconsin’s gross state product. The manufacturing sector is concerned mainly with the processing of agricultural products, along with the manufacture of machinery, metal products, and forest products. Much of the state’s milk is converted into cheese (about one-fourth of the U.S. total), and Wisconsin remains among the top producers of butter. The state also has a long tradition of beer brewing. The machinery industry includes the production of construction and industrial machinery, turbines and engines, and farm and garden machinery. The manufacture of paper, pulp, paperboard, and other forest products is an important source of jobs and income across much of the state.

Wisconsin’s most valuable minerals are sand and gravel and crushed stone. Deposits of zinc and copper were discovered in northern Wisconsin in 1976 but have not been extensively mined. The north also has extensive deposits of iron ore, but mining of this mineral halted in the 1960s.

Services

Taken together, the diverse activities of Wisconsin’s service sector have surpassed manufacturing in terms of both production and jobs. The insurance industry is particularly important in Wausau and Madison. Tourism is also one of the state’s major economic enterprises. Wisconsin Dells, in the Central Plain, is the single most visited site in the state. Rocky sandstone canyons cut by the Wisconsin River were the area’s initial attraction, to which have been added motels, campgrounds, retail centers, theme parks, and other tourist attractions. Real estate, health care, and government are other major components of this sector.

Transportation

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The interior of the state remained a forest wilderness for many years, and the rivers were the main highways for commerce. As the fur trade grew, small villages sprang up around the mouths of rivers and on the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. Soon crude forest roads began to spread in a network within the state. With the coming of motor transportation, it was largely over this network of forest roads that Wisconsin’s modern highway system was developed. In 1918 Wisconsin became the first state to use the number system to mark its highways. Today the state has thousands of miles of state and interstate highways, including Interstates 90, 94, 39, and 43.

Commercial navigation on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River is significant for the state’s industries. The completion of the United States–Canada St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 made seaports of Wisconsin’s lake cities.

The first railroad in the state was a line that ran between Milwaukee and Waukesha in 1851. By 1870 a network of lines connected Milwaukee with the Mississippi River. Between 1890 and 1910 lumbering was the state’s major industry, and the railroads came in to move the lumber.

Madison, Milwaukee, and several smaller cities are served by major airlines. Regional and commuter lines provide service to outlying areas.

Government

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The Territory of Wisconsin was created in 1836. In the same year Madison was chosen as the capital. In 1848 Wisconsin became the 30th state. It is still governed under the constitution of 1848. The chief executive officer is the governor, elected for a four-year term. The state legislature consists of the Senate and the Assembly. The judicial branch is headed by the Supreme Court of seven justices.

Notable political figures from the state include Robert M. La Follette, Sr., who served as governor of Wisconsin from 1901 to 1906 and then became a U.S. senator. One of his sons, Robert, Jr., served in the U.S. Senate from 1925 to 1947; another, Philip, completed three terms as governor of Wisconsin in the 1930s. In 1946 Senator La Follette, Jr., suffered a stunning primary defeat from a relatively unknown World War II veteran, Judge Joseph R. McCarthy. As the new senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy sought publicity through his unsubstantiated charges of there being “card-carrying Communists” in the federal government.

History

Paleo-Indians, the earliest ancestors of Native Americans, arrived in what is now Wisconsin during or after the retreat of the last continental glacier, about 12,000 years ago. They built effigy mounds (earthen mounds in the form of an animal or bird), of which at least 20 remain in the Madison area alone. When the first European explorers reached the Wisconsin region in the 1600s, several Native American groups were living there. These included the Ojibwa (Chippewa), Menominee, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox, Illinois, Miami, Mascouten, Huron, Ottawa, and Santee Sioux. Only four of these groups remain—the Ojibwa, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and Potawatomi. Four other groups, the Stockbridge and Munsee bands of Mohicans, the Brothertown, and the Oneida, migrated from the East in the 1820s and also retain a presence in the state. (See alsoNortheast Indians.)

European Exploration and Settlement

The first European to enter the region that is now Wisconsin was probably Jean Nicolet. The French explorer landed near the present city of Green Bay in 1634 and traveled down the Fox River for a considerable distance. In 1658 two French fur traders, Pierre Esprit de Radisson, and Médart Chouart, sieur de Groseilliers, explored the southern shore of Lake Superior. The first permanent mission was founded by Father Claude Allouez in 1665 near Ashland. In 1672 he built the first church on the site of De Pere, where a trading settlement soon sprang up. Other missionaries and explorers followed, including Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet in 1673 and René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, in 1679.

At the close of the French and Indian War in 1763, the region passed under the rule of Great Britain. Although Wisconsin was part of the territory ceded to the United States at the end of the American Revolution, the British did not evacuate the military posts there until 1796. This was because of disputes between the two countries; John Jay was sent to England to settle the issues in 1794. Treaties with the Native Americans between 1829 and 1833 opened the state for settlement. Immigration was held up for a short time during the Black Hawk War (1831–32).

From Territory to Statehood

The Territory of Wisconsin was created out of the old Northwest Territory on April 20, 1836. All the boundaries except the western border were the same as they are today. To the west the territory included what are now Iowa, Minnesota, and parts of North and South Dakota. The first territorial legislature met at Belmont in what is now Lafayette county.

When the Wisconsin Territory was created, there were about 22,000 non-Native American residents in the area. During the 12 years of territorial government, the white population increased to more than a quarter of a million people. This rapid settlement brought demands for statehood. The first constitution drawn up under the enabling act of 1846 was rejected. After a second constitution was approved, Wisconsin was admitted to the Union on May 29, 1848, as the 30th state.

In the mid-19th century Wisconsin was a leader in the movement against slavery. Abolition societies were formed there in 1840 and 1842, and slaves passed through along the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. In 1854 Ripon was the scene of one of the earliest movements to organize the Republican Party as a united front in opposition to any extension of slavery.

During the second half of the 1800s, the economy of Wisconsin was based largely on wheat farming, lumbering, and dairying. Wheat farming reached its peak in 1872, the year the Wisconsin Dairymen’s Association was formed by William D. Hoard and others. Lumbering, however, was the state’s leading industry from 1890 to 1910. Afterward Wisconsin became the country’s leading dairy state.

The Modern State

At the turn of the 20th century the Progressive movement got its start in Wisconsin under the leadership of reformer Robert M. La Follette. As Wisconsin governor and later as a U.S. senator, he was instrumental in achieving the passage of bills that made the state a leader in social legislation. Among the bills was a corrupt practices act, a worker’s compensation act, and the first state income tax law. Out of the Progressive movement grew the Wisconsin Idea, which sought to make a better use of government for the good of society through the cooperation of the state legislature and the state university.

The state grew steadily during the 20th century and underwent a gradual transition from a rural to a predominantly urban society. Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector continued to flourish at the beginning of the 21st century as the state became one of the country’s top exporters of goods. The number of dairy farms continued to decline because fewer young people entered the industry. However, some rural communities still experienced sizable population increases, primarily as a result of Mexican immigrants who had come to work on large dairy farms and in meatpacking and manufacturing plants in small Wisconsin towns. (See alsoUnited States, “North Central Plains.”)

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